india

The (happy) End

2009-04-26T02:12:00.001-07:00

Jodhpur - the blue city...

... with its Palace and Fort

We arrived there to see friends of us, who we met in Goa. Their family welcomed us with food, music and open hearts.
Here the mother (and the sister) playing harmonium and singing beautiful traditional rajasthani songs.

We met many relatives of our hosts waiting for us in all the city with chai and ready for pictures.

Do you remember Prem? He is already on a photo from November, Filippo's sitar teacher.

Deshu (not sure about the name) is the family's youngest member. He is only 5 (or 6?) years old, but you should see his drum skills! The reincarnation of a musician...

Shanti life.

Choco!

We went for 2 days to the nearby desert to stay in this place.

Filippo was immediately surrounded by the family's children (which are all in all supposed to be 60!)

Karolina was HOT!

Please, pay attention to Filippo's leg...there's nothing more to say.

Karolina in a traditional rajasthani dress...

...got sold of for one camel pretty fast...

...to THIS GUY!

We loved to see the family life, although it will forever remain full of misteries for us. The traditions and rituals are very deep rooted in this part of India. After 5 days we were happy to be back on our own and headed to Agra to seeeeeee

VOILA! The Taj Mahal!

No, there is no photoshop work on this.

Amazing, but well, you've all seen it on pictures already. Go and see it live!

Our journey is about to end. Tomorrow we are leaving this country of contradictions and wonders to the country of parties :) We are very happy about the trip, as well as about going back. Goodbye India!

The reincarnation of the camera

2009-04-14T23:32:00.000-07:00

In Pushkar we met our friend from Vipassana - Albina. We never spoke to each other in the 10 days of meditation but developed a great sympathy towards each other afterwards.

After some days in Pushkar Karolina's camera disappeared (probably it just had to be, as it went through many bad experiences already), but we were lucky: Albina is a photographer, so we have some shots of Pushkar.

On this photo Albina and a weird local who was probably hugging her to passionately..

Only one example of Pushkar's fairytale architecture.

A small lake in a very holy area not far from Pushkar, a complex of temples dedicated to Shiva.
There were many Sadhus on pilgrimage.

Hre we are on a camel car with an indian family that told us their story. Albina made a photo reportage about their tragic situation in order to help them. They are now with no real place to stay - they live in a tent- because they had to sell almost everything they had to cure a serious illness of the youngest son. (If you read this Albina, give us a link where we can whatch more of your photos!).

After Pushkar we went to Bundi - a beautiful little town with palaces and a great fort. Unluckily there are no photos from that period. Our next stop was Udaipur and seeing all that beauty we couldn't resist: We bought a camera!

This is a view from the rooftop restaurant of our guesthouse in Udaipur.

In the room - the magic window...

... and from that window, the indian street life.

Cow porno! (Filippo's shot - he is very proud of it :)

We made an excursion to a nearby village, Dungajpur...

...to visit a very old -700 years old- palace. This is the view from the terrace of the palace on the blue village.

The village through a coloured window of the palace.

The interior of the palace was tremendous. Decorations varied in every room - this is the queen's chamber.

Monsters...

...and more monsters :)

We opened a small door of what seemed to be a simple closet, and discovered a whole collection of Kamasutra paintings!
This is just one little example for you, but we have all the paintings in our camera :)

Now we are saying goodbye to that very romantic city of Udaipur and are on our way to Jodhpur to visit indian friends we met in Goa in November. Let's see how the real indian life looks!

Bikaner, Jaipur and Pushkar moments

2009-04-05T05:18:00.000-07:00

Bikaner Camel Farm:
Camels...

...and their Master

We drunk camel milk and had a camel ice cream...yummy :)

Jaipur (where we have been sick and barely got out):

Filippos first rikshaw drive

the pink old town

Pushkar :
Karolina went to make a henna painting on her hand and soon we were involved in a whole family meeting. See yourself.
Yes, I'm very white!

Working hard but always smiling

Please sister, please brother, photo, photo!

Indian beauties (1)

(and 2)

In the house. Laughing, singing, touching, screaming. More and more children coming out of nowhere.

Oh, sister, how beautiful!

We enjoyed your company!!

VIPASSANA

2009-04-05T04:17:00.001-07:00

This time we are going to write our separate stories, as the experience was very personal. Few photos follow, to give a slight idea of how everything looked.

Karolina's experience:
All the way from Jaipur to the meditation center i was crying and smoking cigarettes. I didn't want to go, i was scared. I don't like loneliness, silence and I'm an active person but yet I was on my way to spend 10 (actually 12) days in silence, loneliness and doing nothing but meditating. I haven't been meditating before neither and everything in me just screamed: NOOO!
Well, i didn't have to go. I could have stayed alone somewhere for ten days, but that idea didn't convince me neither and I thought about sharing this experience with Filippo, because it seemed hard not to...
Yes or no, yes or no...i let the faith decide. I said:" If the place is beautiful, I'll stay, if it's ugly, bye bye."
The place is idyllic. Peacocks, parrots, colibris, squirrels, monkeys, trees, flowers, little bells everywhere, a big quiet center in the middle of a forest area. I stayed.
They separated us into men and women areas and gave us rooms. After a short introduction the Noble Silence started. We were not allowed to speak for 10 days. Scary. The timetable seemed cruel - wake up at 4, followed by meditation (altogether 11h daily), eating brakes (3 times vegetarian Indian food daily), rest and 1,5h discourse in the evening. Half past 9 p.m was sleeping time. Nothing more, nothing less.
The first 3 days we were thought a meditation technique to improve our concentration. 11h daily focusing on the breath. Seems so easy, but the human mind appears to be a monkey mind, running away from the object of concentration in all the possible directions. Thoughts and dreams were weird at this time and i felt very bad. I was sick, my nose was bleeding (from all the concentrated breathing?!), I was cleansing my body, stinking, falling asleep... I wanted to leave. But the mind was slowly getting sharper and the exercise easier...somehow i stayed (mostly because it was to difficult to leave).
On the 4 day the vipassana meditation started - observing sensations on the body - and with a pretty sharp mind we started to scan our bodies for every sensation arising. Let me tell you, that when you sit 11 hours daily crosslegged and with a straight back, the sensations you are feeling soon narrow down to pain.
The technique, simply speaking, is based on observing sensations without reacting to them with feelings of craving or aversion. We were told not to move at all during 3 meditation sessions. You suffer. I suffered. Legs fall asleep, back pain is terrible, you sweat, you cry and you are supposed not to react. On the physical and the mental level. Don't move, don't feel aversion, don't crave...easy to say!
How to describe the rest is a mystery for me, because what happens when you practice seriously is not to be understood on the intellectual level. You are slowly getting master over you mind, which is being purified and the technique takes you out of the misery of life.
After 10 days everybody was shining, happy and peaceful. All the people that i hated during the curse (Indians don't care to burp, fart, cough and brake rules...i did hate a lot of people), came out to be wonderful. I was crying from happiness for the first time from..i don't know when.
of course, it's not a miracle - ten days can't change ones life or take one out of every misery. But the 10 days can show you that there is a technique that works and if you practice it in your life, slowly everything will become better and finally you get liberated (for Buddha it meant reaching the Nirvana and not being reborn anymore, for me the temporal goal is tho have a happy life ;).
I'm so grateful to Filippo and all the course teachers and Goenka-ji, who established Vipassana centers and spoke to us from from the TV in the evenings, to all my comeditators and to Buddha who distributed this technique and and and... as well as i'm enthusiastic to tell about it to all the people who are interessted. So ask! And be happy :)

Karolinas ascetic room
(the rules in the center are: do not kill, do not steal, do not have any sexual activity, do not lie, do not take any toxins, do not speak, do not read/write...and more)

The Meditation Pagoda...

...with meditation cells...

...Karolinas cell.

Shhhhhhhhh...

The Meditation Hall

Peackoks (screaming, crying, miauling)

Female area.

Filippo's experience:
I don't need to write much, because Karolina wrote already a lot and i think it's useless to spend more words on the theoretical aspect of this technique, since to understand it on an intellectual level doesn't help anybody: one has to practice.
Well, it was the second time for me to take part to a Vipassana meditation course, and maybe the second time was even harder then the first.
As Karolina wrote, it's not a proper peaceful experience and one has to work diligently and seriously for the whole 10 days, facing all one's own complexes coming out from the past (and you have nobody to talk to about what you're going through, since you're not allowed to speak, you have to face them by yourself...this brings you for sure a big interior strength).
I joined my first course 2 years ago as a sad, complexed and very problematic person.. and that changed my life...slowly, of course..this course is not a miracle, nobody puts his hands on you to heal you, but you have -working hard- to change the habit pattern of your mind, and to bring this technique into daily life... of course 10 days cannot change your life from one moment to the other, but for sure you go out from the course with another point of view on the world.
Since my first course, my life changed. Of course i had again difficult moments, situations in which i got lost, and so on, but slowly i noticed how the bringing this new understanding into my daily life was slowly making my mind more balanced, quiet, and consequently also my life was changing for better...my "new" mind was starting attracting beautiful situations, beautiful experiences and beautiful people.
Joining this course for the second time was like an "understanding bomb" exploding into my brain... i don t want to talk to much about my experiences there because i don t want to confuse the idea of people reading this...one has to try this course if one wants to understand what is about.
What i can say for sure is the Vipassana technique is the one thaught by the Buddha in his original form, and it's not a sect, it's not a secret or ambiguos organization, it's not a brain wash, it's not a religion, it's open to people from any sex, age, religion, culture and country...you don't have to convert to any form of belief to join the course, it is an universal remedy everybodys' suffering and misery.
The centers are spreading (and are already well spread) all over the world from people who do it for free,to help others to come out of their suffering, this people don't get paid.
The courses run on donations, to join a course is theoretically free (you can leave a donation-if you want- at the end of the course), and donations are not accepted from people who never took part to a course.
We are so enthusiastic and we are feeling so good about the course that we are now spending our second day out of the center closed in an internet point to write to our friends how good it was and to convince them to try the course.

For anybody who wishes more informations, this is the internet address of Vipassana.

www.dhamma.org

before we disspapear for 10 days Vipassana...

2009-03-23T04:12:00.000-07:00

Tibetan Praying Wheels in Dharamsala

Balance - our freak friend from California

The Golden Temple in Amritsar

...free food and sleeping places for everybody

Filippo and his shadow

INDIA INDIA INDIA!

Camel city Bikaner

colours for the grey desert background

Rat Temple...

bad news

2009-02-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

The camera, which wasn't in good condition lately, died yesterday, attacked by mean viruses. The time and cause of death are not sure, but anything has been tried to make it recover and nothing worked. Sadly (probably more for us then for you) there are no more pictures and the blog is closed down temporarly. Buuuuuuu.

Andaman Paradise Islands.

2009-02-02T01:16:00.000-08:00

Preface: the camera got broken somewhere between Chennai and the Andaman Islands. There was no chance to repair it there, or even check what is wrong, so there are not many pictures from this period (we hoped it makes pictures still, so this are the few we made). Now, in Calcutta, after visiting the Sony centre, it came out, that the LCD screen is broken, so pictures can be made, basically, like with an analog camera now...surprises.

We stayed 2 weeks on Havelock Island, in a little resort on the beach.
Everything was much more beautiful and amazing than we expected, we found ourselves in a practically uncontamined nature...the sea was turquoise, coconut palms everywhere and the weather was perfect. The most beautiful landscapes we have ever seen. This is also a reason why tourist are not allowed to stay on the Andaman Islands for more than 30 days... unfortunately :)

This is the hut in which we slept.. it was quite small for two but charming (and cheap) enough to convince us not to change for a larger accomodation.

And this is the view from the hut, 30 seconds walk and we were in the sea :)

Havelock has many beautiful beaches, among them is one very special - the Elephant beach, that was very close to the sismic centre of the tsunami, and got seriously damaged.
The way to it led us through a piece of jungle...

...then mud fields with broken trees and millions of crabs...

...a dramatic view.

We could start our day on a beach with the sunrise and end it on the other side of the island with marvellous sunsets. Basically that was what we were doing: beaches, guitar, friends...real vacations...

The resort was inhabited by a lot of Israelies (who apparently-we found out- are all over India travelling since generations...great people!), this is a picture of us with Shay, somebody we will remember.

This is our cat for our permanence in the Island...

... We were very sad when we had to leave, because we don't know when we will find such a paradise again.
We learned how to relax completely. Even now, in Kolkatta - a very fast and busy city- our rhythm is still very slow and chilled.

This last picture was taken from the ship to the airport.

Again, it was an amazing experience.
Now we are in Kolkatta, which seems to be much better than how everybody describes it, and we' re having a good time. In two days we' ll leave to Varanasi, let's see what India still holds for us!

Photo-story

2009-01-15T04:55:00.000-08:00

There are many pictures this time and much to many stories to be able to be told here. Especially when the computer is restarting itself every 5 minutes. So, we just gonna make short descriptions to each photo this time.

In Punducherry we attained a yoga festival. There were lectures, concerts and shows, like this one: boys showing yoga to Indian classical music.

We went to Auroville, a village next to Punducherry, designed by The Mother (disciple of Sri Aurobindo) especially for living in peace, meditating, spiritual practices.

This bayon tree has an incredible charm. Its branches grow down to the earth (or up? we didn't understand) making it a super-tree with about 30 stems.

This is Aurovilles heart. A meditation hall with a crystal ball inside. Next to it there is an amphitheater also for meditation and chanting. The place is very beautiful and peaceful.

The seaside on the east side of India is different, then we saw in Goa. Nearly nobody takes a swim. We tried, but were overwhelmed by the waves. This two Indian girls are in typical beach dresses (no different from the street dress). Woman don't swim here, usually, and if they do, they go into the water dressed like this.
Having a bikini is not the funniest thing on earth neither, if you are not a secret exhibitionist...starring is still friendly, i would say.

That's Mamallapuram, its beach site and temple.

Our hotel is very close to the beach (2 min), but we anyways swim more often in the swimming pool that is right in front of our bungalow. It's just great to swim after you wake up!

Mamallapuram is a bit similar to Hampi. Many temples and many stones to climb on. Beautiful views from the top of them...

...like this palm-sunset.

But you are never alone in the hills. Goats, dogs, cows and especially many monkeys observe the visitors.

The lighthouse with it's view over the small town.

On the first day in Mamallapuram we met Swamiji, a blind Indian guy, who needed help with writing his emails. Filippo helped him and as thank you we were invited for a delicious dinner with many nice people, music and discussions. This is a view from Swamijis balcony.

The Five Rathas Temple and Indians, who want to pose with white people for their photoalbums...

...and now? Who is the stronger one?

Mamallapuram is famous for its stone carving. Here a meditating (or relaxing?) Buddha (huge!).

Filippo and his private monkey sir, having a deep discussion.

In front of this carved stonewalls the dance festival of Mamallapuram takes place these days. Nice spectacles on incredible background.

Lost in the labyrinths of temples...

And yes, we bought a hammock! Even a double bed hammock and had it outside of the door of our bungalow. Now we are taking it to the Andaman Islands, where we fly to on the 17th in the morning. We heard it's paradise...better then Mamallapuram?...hard to imagine!

Narayana Gurukula

2009-01-05T02:16:00.000-08:00

We found the Narayana Gurukula Ashram not without problems, as it is situated in (or rather next to) a little village. Swami Vinaya waved us and set the water for a tea. Asked, if we could stay for a while, he answered: you can stay your whole life. And he meant it. I have had some ideas about Ashrams, mostely from books or stories. Waking up at 4, chanting, meditating, praying, cleaning, studying, meditating, chanting... but everything came different. Filippo asked what the Guru was doing and got the answer: "I'm trying to do nothing, it is the hardest thing to do". So we started our week at the Gurukula. The surrounding was beautiful. Trees, flowers, water, shadows, benches, sculpures...every minute the senses were fed with colours and smells (fruit trees).

We got a little room in a cottage and were left on our own.

Involved in daily activities we learned a lot - practical informations about cooking vegetarian delicious food, holding (about 10) animals or warming water if you want to have a hot shower...as city children we had to adapt to the environment ;)

Here Filippo is preparing a hot shower for us.

We can not show you all the lovely cats (including 3 absolutely sweet kittens) and dogs (although, barking all night they weren't so sweet anymore), so here is just a sample of our favourite photos.

Cat nr 1 (called Tom form us - we couldn't remember all the names!) was constantly occupying the lap of Filippo.

Vidyas sweet dog posed very patiently for my photos.

And here we can see the daily activities of cat number 7 ;)

It was so nice to have all these animals around!

The Ashrams buildings were all very beutiful and peacefull as well. In this place we did some yoga in the morning.

And this was our favourite place to read.

We spent new years eve at the bonefire, having an incredible sky over our heads and will probably never forget it.

There was a lot of guitar playing and many discussions. It could have been a perfect relaxing retreat in the nature. But it was more.

What the Guru told and thought us is not for a blog, though. Just to say: Beautiful person and an incredible expierience. Also Margaret, his wife, (called by me Mother Nature) thought us a lot. We are very happy that we have visited the Gurukula Ashram.

Now we are in Puducherry at the Yoga Festival. It's hot and interesting. And finally again: the sea :)

Happy Krishnas

2008-12-25T22:15:00.000-08:00

Before going to Mysore we had a little stop in a mountain city called Ooty, as we met some people who suggested us to see the place.
Ooty is a rural village, plunged in nature, which revealed to be a very cold place, and we didn't expect it, of course...we had to wear very heavy clothes and the temperatures were around 0 to 5 degrees.
Nevertheless, Ooty was a very nice place to stop for a couple of days.
This is one of the many temples in the village, showing many hindi deities all next to each other.

The landscapes were nice and we wandered around the city eating kilograms of homemade chocolate, the speciality of Ooty...
After freezing for 3 nights, we decided to move on to Mysore, though.

This is the outside of the very famous Maharaja's Palace of Mysore, residence for the maharajas in Mysore. Unluckily, we were not allowed to take pictures inside the palace.
The palace is of pretty recent construction, which took place about 100 years ago. The inside is shining of gold and marbel, very luxurious and astonishing.
There are many places and buildings to see in Mysore, but the ones which were most charming to us are not touristic attractions.

Two guys took us with their rickshaw to the old town to show us handcrafts of Mysore.

This place is a bidi (indian cigarettes) factory. Bidis are rolled in leaves, every single one is made by hand and one employer is able to produce about 4 thousand cigarettes a day.
The Indians love their bidis: they are cheap, healthier than normal cigarettes and the fabrication produces many working places. That's why our guide called this cigarettes "a gift from God for the Indians".

Mysore is also known for its wood works. Besides many furniture factories, wood is used also for art. This man was creating pictures out of several species of wood, putting them together like in a puzzle. The result was very surprising!
The picture you see contains no colour, nor any kind of paint, it's entirely made out of wood.

Another fascinating place in Mysore is the Devaraja's market.
Once you enter it you get blinded by beautiful colours and guided from one sweet smell to the other.

This powder colours can be used as body painting, cloth painting or simply on paper...
The Indians use this colours to paint their forhead, as ornament, for religious purposes and many other unknown aims.
We loved them and, obviously, we made each other the same present for Christmas ;)

The fruit and the flower part of the market....
Flowers are used as hair decoration for women and to produce oils (for perfumes, massage, as anti-mosquito...or for getting high- you could find pure marijuana oil..just in case you wanted, of course ;)

From there only one smell could get even better: sweeeeeeeeets!

This brick-looking things are sweets.. very very sweet. They mostly contain brown sugar and coconut.

Unexpected, Christmas came by...also here, in India. We did our best to maintain some traditions from home, as you can see. There were presents, the chrismas tree, a big dinner...and a big food intoxication for Filippo...:(
Luckily it's over now. Tomorrow we move on from Mysore to a place in the south of Bangalore - we will try to find an Ashram, which our beloved yoga teacher Sajee suggested us ;)

10 things to do before you die...

2008-12-16T04:52:00.000-08:00

We had a long trip from magical Hampi to Kerala. One Rikshaw, two trains, one ferry...after 30 hours we arrived in Cochin and setteled down in Fort Cochin, a little island. The trip wasn't too tiring, though. We had sleeper places in the train (as shown in the picture) and some nice views during the frequent stops.

Cochin had the first communist governement in India, which made a big revolution, leaving back educated, friendly people and very few poor.
It was very surprising at first sight to see Che Guevara's face in India.

Kerala is also famous for its spicy, rich kitchen...

...so Karolina decided to learn how to prepare some of its specialities. Here trying to turn a dosa (which was delicious, although bad shaped)

...After a couple of days we realized that the city was actually becoming very boring, not much to see, and even no places to go out to eat.

But there were some highlights, here the first..

This guy, sitting in the street, asked us 50 Rupees (80 cents), to hypnotize :) this two cobras with his flute. This seemed to be his job, as he couldn't walk properly. We asked him if he was ever bitten by the snakes and he answered: "Yes, but put ayurvedic medicament, no problem!", and he showed us the scars on his hands. He also let us sit next to the cobras, but only one of us dared...

The other highlight and the actual reason for which we stayed one week in Cochin was an incredible Yoga course. Our Guru, Sajee, impressed us with his knowledge, good sense of humour and lifestyle. Not to forget: his leg behind his head while standing on the other...and smiling :) The course was a combination of meditation, pranayama and basic yoga postures. But basic in India is a bit different...

By now Filippo can do the scorpion without Sajee behind him. We made a big phisical progress and enjoyed a lot.

On our last day in the city, we went on an excursion that the Lonely Planet guide sets in the top 10 list of the "things to do before you die" : The Kerala Backwaters.
Starting on a houseboat, we discovered the bigger canals...

We saw the work of the locals, like brick making, fishing, collecting grass for building houses, making local beer from palm trees (which we bought and we 're going to drink tonight, next to the fish straight out of the sea....mmmmmm)

In the middle of the excursion we had delicious Keralan lunch, including pineapple curry - heaven in the mouth. All served on banana tree leaves.

Then (after a short swim) we changed to a smaller boat and continued our trip through tighter canals. The nature there is phantastic and wild. See paradise?...Kerala!

Tomorrow we leave to Mysore, see you from there...

Holy Hampi

2008-12-08T05:38:00.000-08:00

Hampi, our first holy city and holy experience, no alcohol and no meat for 7 days.
Hampi is a heritage city, protected by the Unesco. The city is an incredible mix of street life, cow shit and beautiful, very very old monuments, most of them discovered under the ground 2 centuries ago.
We took off on bikes to discover all those temples and statues, and here some impressions:

this used to be the public bath...

Krishna Temple...

...and Queen's Bath.

In Hampi we were all the time surrounded by children..every child is attracted and fascinated by western (white) people. They asked us for every kind of things, like for a school pen, for buying their stickers of indian divinities or a book guide of the city, or simply they wanted to appear in one of our photos-shake our hand...

school pen action...

posing for photo action...

being friends. (He' s not a child:)

Our guesthouse was really nice, besides one fact. A cute and charming little girl used to wake us up every morning at 7, crying, screaming, laughing, screaming... Never seen such a spoiled and such a sweet child. what a combination...?!

One of the most beautiful, freaky and "i don' t want to go away from this place" temple we saw is Hanuman Temple, dedicated -of course- to Hanuman, the monkey god.
To reach this place we had to take one of this strange boats..

Caronte...

During the route we saw a lot of hidden temples and statues, that fascinated us...

(Where do all this stones come from?)

Shiva's symbol.

Then we had to follow a woman, who was going to work - she led us through plantations and fields. Just beautiful!

mmmmmmm....

So we reached Hanuman Temple, after a long long stair way.
Of course this holy place is full of monkeys, that are very used to people...

Tanja has been attacked, and Filippo didn't want to go away from there anymore...

What about food? Here a sample of breakfast and the way of eating it.

hot, spicy and full of oil... eaten only with the right hand (the left you use instead of toilet paper).
And for the end some other nice scenes of Hampi. Tomorrow we go to Cochin (and we will not arrive tomorrow, oh no...)

Holiday from holidays

2008-12-05T04:50:00.000-08:00

Goa...we arrived in there, happy about living at the seaside, but what we found was much more comfortable, than we could have had expected. Arambol looks a bit like a hippie commune, western hippies, of course. Filippo found a sitar teacher in the first days and so we decided to stay some longer in this place. The stress from the travels before disappeared very fast - Goa is specialized for making life comfortable to tourists. A bit like any western seaside, maybe, but much more beautiful and calm (shanthi shanthi). Just behind our guest house the magic park (palm park in which they make yoga& meditation sessions, etc.).

Prem (the sitar teacher), his brother Praveen (tabla teacher) and Alpesh (our spiritual guide ;) spent with us every day, telling thousand of stories ( all with a moral or at least funny), cooking with us (we made chapati).

Here we present you proudly Prem:

And in this picture you see Praveen (left) and Alpesh (meditating) in one of the often organized jam sessions at sunset on the beach.

We found an incredible place...behind big rocks, on which Filippo (which appeared to be a reincarnation of a monkey) went to meditate...

...the sweet lake!

The sweet lake is located between the mountains and 10 meters from the sea.

We found by chance a "mud river" walking through the wood behind the lake, which apparently is an attraction for many Indians and foreigners because of the particular mud you find there. Everybody goes there to cover his body with the mud... they say it' s very healthy..
We tried!
The skin was like baby skin afterwards.

Besides bathing in the sea and in the lake, we spent most of our time in the beautiful "german bakery", a very nice bar at the beach... we enjoyed our free time and had much fun with the waiters :). On Saturday we went to Anjuna's night market - a very colorful place with beautiful stands...

and live music (this is a Punjabi group).
In Arambol we met Tanja, a very nice girl from Russia, who is traveling with us for some days now.
In the moment we are in Hampi and we enjoy a lot. Every day we take many pictures, so the next blog entry is to be expected soon.

P.S. Terrorism attacks didn't effect us.
P.P.S. It's 35 degrees, sunny and the moon smiles at night.

Contrasts of India

2008-11-21T21:20:00.000-08:00

Still in Mumbai, we were asked to play extras in a Bollywood movie. We said yes, of course! When do you have another chance to do something like this?! They brought us in the morning to a place, where they took care of our appearance - we needed to look like boolywood starts apparently.
They made me up, Filippo had to shave his beard. They putted us in semi elegant clothes, and ready we were: Mister and Misses Bollywood Extra:
They gave us to eat, to drink, and even 500 rupies each, for playing a quick part in a scene in a gallery. We were the European visitors of an exhibition. The movie is called Rafta and should come out in march here - we will go to see our part ;)

From Mumbai we moved over to Pune (Poona), which appeared to be not the best decision. In Poona is situated the Osho Ashram, in which we were interested in the beginning, but then discovered it to be a money making machine and strange sect in one. The very luxorious huge Ashram has even Zennis (Zen Tennis)...this was to much for us. We profited from the beautiful park behind the Ashram, which we could do for free, luckily.

The place was really relaxing and all the surroundings beautiful. We also found ourselves for some time in a small village, very calm, happy and beautiful. There are no more photos from Poona, though. Cause what we have seen, heard and smelled after leaving the idyllic surroundings of Osho Ashram didn't inspire me to take any. It was loud, dirty and stinky. Many slums, even more homeless and dead bodies on the streets. Chaos. I knew places like this exist, i also saw photos of them or reportages, but live it was too much for my nervs. We decided to leave Poona as fast as possible and take a 13h trip to Panaji (Panjim), the capitol of Goa.
This city surprised us very positively. Quiet, clean, sunny and cheap - it was just what we needed. Panaji was until 40 years ago a Portugese city, and you and see it. Lovely little streets and buildings, stairs everywhere, european architecture mixed with indian influences...the best point of the travel, so far.
We walked for hours, in love with this quiet and friendly place.
Here some photos of it.

In Panjim all different the religions seem to exist in peace next to each other. You see crosses, Hindu temples, Arabic corners...
After a more then a week in India we also started to take first little risks with food. We asked ourselvs why we are actually not eating the fruits from the markets and tried immediatly the coconut juice, that they sell on every corner here... We had different opinions on it...

On the next day we took a motorbike and went to the seaside. Riding all the day and finally seeing the see was just amazing! On the beach you are of course not alone. There are people who want to sell you everything and nothing, there are dogs, of course, and also...cows! Another surprising thing was, that all the Indian people are completely dressed on the beach...and also in the sea.

Tomorrow we are moving to the goan seaside, let's see what waits us there...

Welcome to Mumbai

2008-11-15T03:43:00.000-08:00

After a pretty hard trip, indian people welcomed us friendly..too friendly even. Taxis on every step, how can i help you, smiling, helpful, cheating.
for the first taxi we paid about 5 times too much, they asked us 16 times too much.
Arriving in the north of Mumbai, at 3 in the night, with 28 degrees was a bit shocking. People, cows, goats, dogs and cats - everyone was still awake and on the street.
The first impressions...there are millions every day and they cannot be summarized in few sentences, but we post here some photos and short stories to give you an impression.
Maybe we will not post often in this blog, cause it is not so obvious here to find internet points.
On the photo above is the Taj Mahal of Mumbai, which is close to the Gateway of India - huge buildings, surrounded by a square full of people, who want to sell you something. Every 3 seconds you hear "Yes, sir, yes, madame", "Can i help you", "Pssssss", etc. etc. And the things they try to sell you are even more absurd.

The seashore of Mumbai, at the sunset.
Looks great, smells horrible. It s not possible to swim because the sea is black...

Traveling by train is an art in itself. This one time i had the space to do a photo. Normally the trains are crowded until nobody fits in anymore. People jump out and in during the train rolls. There are different wagons for women (didn't use yet).
Once we jumped into the 1st class, having 2nd class ticket, and, of course, we got caught. They made us step down of the train, and took us to an office with other indian people who didn't have the ticket, or had the false one like us...We paid about 10 euros, which is really really much here, the other ones didn't pay anything of course.. This is the way to learn...

Guess which one of us uses sandals?

Children are asking you for money nearly all the time, but they are the the ones who you really want to give it, too. These 3 guys who spoke very well english told us some (true or made up?) stories about their cat, that doesn't eat for days. After we gave them some money, the stories started to multiply, but the chat with them was anyways very pleasant.

We went to an island near to Mumbai, called Elephanta Island.
The island is property of Unesco, and it is the site of very old caves, containing centenary sculpures in the rock of indian divinities...
Very short visit, anyways, and was funny the sight of the thousand monkeys everywhere.

Down also a picture of a sculpure.

There are dogs everywhere on the streets. They all look the same, seem to be not agressive and always sleepy (it's about 30 degrees now). We would like to play with them, but we keep a big distance, being a bit afraid of the illnesses they could have.

Mumbai is full of signs of spirituality and gods. "Oms" are practicly on every corner, car, etc. In each car, restaurant and shop you'll find also little statues of gods, altars.
On the picture a poster in front of the Academy of Science, which was about the hand reading as a scientific learning... in the end who knows..

Honking: for nothing, all the time, in all sounds...
In one moment you can hear about 15 different kinds of honking.
We didn't get used yet...

In the end we went shopping. It was one of the most tiring experiences ever ;) Lower you see the result as well as our wonderful hotel room.